Earth Song: Twilight Serenade Read online

  “You shouldn’t have thought you could avoid me for long,” Selain joked as his squad came off the shuttle.

  “I wasn’t avoiding you,” she assured him.

  “Where’s the hubby and babe?”

  “Back home,” she said, then promptly changed the subject. “Ready to head down?”

  Selain’s head cocked fractionally at her reaction, and then he nodded. “Ready when you are, ma’am. Ranger teams have visited every settlement and industrial facility on Midgard. There is no evidence of any living sentient presence on the planet. Furthermore, there are no predators larger than a small dog. And they are not interested in humans as prey.”

  “Midnight Utopia,” Minu joked.

  “Some of the men have taken to calling the planet Twilight, ma’am.”

  Minu thought the name a little more fitting than Midgard, but what was done was done.

  “Did you bring the shuttles?” he asked.

  “As planned,” Minu said. She gestured at a wall and it became a display screen showing the Ibeen behind them.

  “You’ve been learning your daughter’s tricks,” Selain noted.

  “Some, yeah.” Minu showed her a tiny crystalline bracelet she now wore. Minu looked at it for a second, still not sure if she liked the idea. The People’s tech used Azure for everything.

  As they watched three of the Ibeen’s huge cargo balls split and opened wide. From inside of each emerged a line of four brand new Phoenix shuttles. Shorter than the needle-shaped Kaatan shuttles, they were much wider with forward swept wings and considerable cargo capacity.

  The shuttles quickly broke up into groups. Some headed for the firebase, a pair farther out into the system, more towards the planet, and one flew to meet up with the Kaatan.

  “So what’s the plan, boss?” Selain asked.

  “I’ve got approval to start using Midgard as a base.”

  “That’s excellent. Not as a colony?”

  “Not yet. The council wants to wait until our little meeting on Nexus. We should be able to better research the issue of squatting a world like this at that point.”

  “So what kind of base?” he wondered.

  “One that looks an awful lot like a colony,” Minu said. Selain narrowed his eyes and Minu gave him a slow, deliberate wink. He just shook his head and chuckled.

  The Phoenix docked a minute later and Minu boarded with her detail close behind. Just inside, the pilot greeted them.

  “Welcome aboard, First,” Chris Sommercorn said, saluting in the new fashion.

  “Gonna take me a while to get used to that,” Minu said, returning the salute. “How was the crossing?”

  “Boring,” Chris admitted. “The grazers aren’t much for conversation or entertainment. They spend most of their time flying around inside the empty cargo balls, practicing zero gravity maneuvers, and eating salads.”

  “Exciting,” Selain said, shaking the four-star Chosen’s hand.

  “We do the flying, you guys can do the dying.”

  “Screw you, flyboy.”

  “You two play nice,” Minu said with mock seriousness to match their play.

  “He better,” Chris said, “since I’m flying him down.”

  “Hrumph,” Selain grunted, “I better head aft and see if there are any airsickness bags in this crate.”

  The trip down was more energetic than it would have been aboard the ancient People’s shuttles. Those relied on shields and gravitic drives heavily during reentry to a planet’s atmosphere. The Phoenix, on the other hand, was more old school.

  Its underside was a composite moliplas dualloy ceramic hybrid Aaron’s scientists had invented. Able to absorb and shunt away thousands of degrees of thermal buildup. Under that was a superconducting layer that kept the heat from transferring into the passenger area. Small gravitic thrusters on the wings, nose, and tail provided attitude control. The rest, as Aaron liked to say, was up to Sir Isaac Newton.

  It could make a hot entry, similar to a People’s shuttle, if necessary. However that consumed power, and for human’s power was a valuable commodity. Even with thousands of huge ship scale EPCs in storage, they wouldn’t last forever. Especially with a fleet of warships. So the Phoenix just glided in.

  Chris was an exceptional pilot, bringing them through the upper atmosphere with only a few bumps. Just ten minutes after departing from the Kaatan, Chris was piloting the Phoenix in an unpowered descent, sweeping over the biggest city on Midgard. Perfectly flat plains went from horizon to horizon in every direction.

  “The airfield is done?” Minu asked. She’d pulled rank and grabbed the co-pilot seat. She was qualified on the shuttle, after all. Chris’ actual copilot was riding the otherwise unoccupied third seat. That position could be either sensor operator, engineer, or gunner, depending on the mission.

  “Must be,” Chris said as he pointed. Just outside the city a stretch of concrete was visible extending out into the once perfectly symmetrical fields.

  Minu examined the controls for a moment and tapped a few keys. A navigational beacon was identified and the approach vector fed to Chris. He grunted and locked in the approach.

  “They’ve been busy,” Minu said with a nod of approval.

  Chris brought them around in a series of wide sweeping turns, expertly bleeding off speed until there was a shudder announcing the shuttle dropping below the speed of sound just as he finished his final turn on line with the long strip of ceramic concrete.

  “Well done,” Minu appreciated.

  “Thanks, First. Your husband sat in on my Phoenix qualifications. He said I was a natural.”

  Minu figured if her husband gave that kind of a complement the kid was likely an impressive pilot. Then she sighed as she thought about her baby and husband hundreds of light years away. Her breasts hurt. It had been a couple hours since she pumped.

  Chris gave the shuttle another notch of flaps, getting the feel for the slightly thinner atmosphere. The generation of Phoenix he flew had been designed to operate on worlds with only 22% of the atmospheric pressure of Bellatrix. Midgard was 96%, so he hadn’t even trimmed out the wing length.

  The edge of the concrete shot by below him, cross-hatched lines had been painted in infrared reflective paint making them easy to spot in Aether’s hot glow. The shuttle’s belly radar chirped in increasing pulses, telling him how close he was to the pavement. Just as the pulses merged into a constant chime he flared the shuttle out. It hovered along the runway just under two hundred kph, then settled gently onto its wheels with a little squawk.

  Minu nodded again; she could see where Aaron’s approval came from. He handled the Phoenix like he’d been born behind the controls.

  “How are you in space?”

  “Space is easy,” the pilot said, glancing over at her with a wink. “You don’t have to worry about storms and FOD.”

  Chris used the joystick to steer them off the runway and onto the taxiway just as another Phoenix could be seen lining up on the runway. Minu made a mental note to double the runways. In a minute they were taxiing up to the terminal/warehouse complex.

  Like the runways, it was brand new. Minu recognized the look of a preformed facility put up by bots.

  The doors to the terminal opened and a group of figures came trotting out. Several were Rasa, others Beezer. A group of Rangers followed close behind led by Captain Page. Chris got up and went back, opening the passenger doors as Minu headed back. A dozen human specialists waited for the First to pass. The frigid air of Midgard was less of a surprise than the first time. It smelled like a farm.

  Minu looked out the door to see none other than Bad Cold standing with a group of equally high ranking Beezer.

  “Greeting, Minu Groves,” he chuffed and grumbled, adding a bow and a flourish. “We are amazed at your new world!”

  “We are unsure if we can legally claim it,” Minu said. Her personal squad dismounted and took up a casual-appearing perimeter around their leader. Minu wished they’d take it down a
notch, especially here.

  Bad Cold looked around, up and down, back at the buildings and at the runways. The whine of another Phoenix’s gravitic impellers was passing nearby on the way to the warehouses. Then he looked back at her.

  “This appears like ownership to us!”

  “What is your stance on our occupation?” Minu asked as she climbed down shuttle’s built in ramp.

  “We are keen to be involved in your plans,” he spoke in his language, like listening to rocks rolling down a muddy hill. “If some of those plans bend a Concordian rule or two, so be it.”

  “Only bend?”

  The Beezer coughed and made a sound like a charging kloth. It had to be laughing, Minu decided.

  “It is past time the natural order was upset. It seems the humans are talented at altering the way things seem to be intended to go.”

  Minu shrugged and he laughed again.

  “It will be interesting, at the very least.”

  I’m sure of that, Minu thought as Captain Page stopped and saluted.

  “Report, Captain?” she asked as she returned the salute, struggling not to laugh at the act.

  “Orbital training cycle completed last week, so we transferred groundside and I’m using the opportunity to train the company in alien environs. They’re in the Misty Mountains on a two-day survival hike right now.”

  “Misty Mountains?”[][]

  “Yeah,” she said and produced a tablet. The captain called up an orbital map and showed her how many features had been named. She suspected her Chosen had been busy. The mountain range next to the industrial city was labeled Misty Mountains. For that matter the city was now named Moria. Yep, Chosen for sure. She hoped there wasn’t anywhere named Mordor.

  “Good call on the training. Any injuries?” Minu asked.

  “We had two that could not acclimate to microgravity,” she explained. “We’ve made a note on their files and they were transferred back to gravity until we came planetside.”

  “Sounds like you’re managing well,” Minu told her. “I’ve talked with Ken Benedict, our head of training. We’re going to be sending Rangers in battalion strength for training. It will also ensure a standing force here.”

  Capt. Page glanced at the Phoenix then upwards to space where the firebase orbited in orbit.

  “That’s going to take a lot of trips.”

  “Not necessarily,” Minu said with a wink. The captain cocked her head, but Minu gave her a ‘don’t worry about it’ look and that was that.

  Inside the terminal building Minu found an old friend waiting. Cherise smiled and held her arms out.

  “What do you think of the place?” Cherise asked as the two embraced.

  “You’ve busted your asses!” Minu cheered.

  “The bots did a lot of it, and the Beezer were invaluable. It took a little working with the computer systems. They’re all the same code script as used on the Kaatan, but none of it locked. Damned turnkey colony, here.” Cherise looked around. “Where’s my god-daughter?”

  “Home with Aaron,” Minu said then continued on, but Cherise easily caught the tension in her friend’s voice. “The council didn’t approve outright colonization,” Minu said, and Cherise’s face darkened. “Even your proxy wasn’t enough.”

  “Fools,” Cherise grumbled.

  “Well,” Minu shrugged, “it is technically squatting. And the Concordia doesn’t take it well.”

  Cherise passed her a tablet outlining progress on ground side installations.

  “Once we’ve been to Nexus,” Minu went on, “they’ve agreed to revisit the issue. Part of their problem is that as long as the Tog are responsible for us, anything wrong we do can be taken out on them.”

  “Still short sighted,” Cherise growled. “I’ve read the same laws you did. There isn’t anything about undiscovered worlds.”

  Minu gestured out the wide panoramic moliplas window installed to one side of the main promenade. “Looks pretty discovered to me.” Hundreds of buildings were visible even from the low height of the spaceport, just next to endless farms.

  “Nothing in the Concordia registry of planets,” Cherise pushed.

  “Nothing for almost a hundred lightyears,” Minu agreed, “and the closest are unusable star systems.”

  “The Lost sure could pick a hideout.”

  “We’ll just go with the ‘Big Ass Base’ planet,” Minu said, eliciting a snort of amusement from Cherise. Minu continued scanning the work Cherise had overseen.

  “Is this right? Seventy-nine billion bushels of that hybrid wheat in inventory?”

  “Only what we’ve inventoried so far,” Minu said.

  “I hope you brought me some more staff,” Cherise said darkly. “It’ll take me the rest of my life by myself.”

  “No, there wasn’t time.”

  “Boss!” Cherise whined.

  “Don’t fuss, they’ll be here in short order.”

  “But it takes weeks round trip, even in Lilith’s little speedball. And she can only carry a few dozen at a time. I gave you a laundry list for several hundred staff, Chosen and civilian.”

  “That won’t be a problem.”

  Cherise gave her a skeptical look. Minu replied by reaching into a special pocket and showing he what it contained.

  “What’s that?” Cherise wondered. Minu just waggled her eyebrows, annoying the hell out of Cherise in the progress.

  “Is the special building I asked for ready?”

  “Sure,” Cherise said. “You and your mysteries. Kal’at is there waiting for us.”

  A brand new aerocar was waiting outside. Minu looked at it in surprise as Cherise opened the door for her boss.

  “What, you don’t like surprises?”

  “I wasn’t expecting this,” she said. “Where did you find it?”

  “The factory at Moria,” Cherise explained. “Fully operational and with open format configuration. We brought down a few component blocks using a pair of Eseel gunboats and gravitic tractors. Lost control of one. There’s a new crater not far from Moria.”

  Minu gawked for a second.

  “The CI from the Fiisk helped figure it out. Later shipments went fine.”

  The flight was quick, with Cherise’s capable piloting. They flew over the mostly quiet city giving Minu a chance to look at the way it was laid out. Concentric circles with radiating avenues, like most of the bigger cities in the Concordia. Except in those cities that central square would have been a portal spire. Here there was nothing. It was as if the builders had just copied an existing design and left out the spire.

  “Where’d they build it?” Minu asked.

  “Well there weren’t many open areas. We had some trouble with the airport, actually. The Rasa techs bulldozed the land one day. When they came back the next morning, agricultural bots were replanting the fields.”

  “Stubborn robots,” Minu laughed.

  “Yeah, it took a while to figure out how to stop them from undoing everything we did. Kal’at finally found the planetary central command. It’s a deep bore bunker, just like on Bellatrix.”

  “I wonder how many Concordian worlds have them,” Minu thought aloud.

  “Anyway, we decided to use the central square.”

  Minu looked at the central square and saw a large dome there. She chuckled at the irony of their location choice.

  As they came around to land Minu could see several more aerocars and a couple of heavy duty aerotrucks as well. There were a few Beezer there and a bunch of Rasa. It looked like most of Kal’at’s scientific team. Everyone looked up as Cherise’s aerocar came in for a landing.

  “Welcome back, First,” Kal’at said with a bow as Minu climbed out. The Beezer all bowed as well.

  “Glad to be back.”

  Kal’at gestured at the building behind him, a brand new geodesic dome of dualloy sections. “Is this sufficient to your needs?”

  “It should do fine.”

  “What is your plan, First?”

>   “Come inside and I’ll show you.”

  Minu’s requirements had been made considering that they might have to bring down components from spaceship salvage, and with that in mind she’d gone with simple. There was a single heavy duty door with a secure code control. As it swung open Minu could see the interior was well-lit with high energy lights, instead of the low intensity bioluminescent types common in the Concordia.

  Because it was a geodesic dome there was no need for any internal support structure, but Minu had still had some added. Kal’at also took the initiative and put a section of internal structures near the door.

  “Looks great,” she said as she walked inside and towards the center. Kal’at nodded in appreciation of her compliment.

  “We just programmed the bots,” he said. “There are quite literally millions of tons of raw materials on this world.”

  Minu kept walking until she got to the center of the structure. Just as she’d instructed, there was a mark there to clearly indicate the spot.

  “Perfect,” Minu said. “Now everyone get back, please.”

  The Beezer, Rasa, and Cherise all stepped back a few meters, making a semi-circle to eagerly watch what their leader was going to do.

  She reached into her special pocket and removed the rod from inside. Picking up where she had left off many light years away, Minu touched the end and it came to pulsing blue life. Script appeared in air asking her if she wished to proceed. Minu touched the ‘yes’ icon and the rod went from pulsing blue to solid purple. Minu sat it on the floor and backed away.

  “Is that PCR…” Cherise started to ask when the glowing rod lying on the floor suddenly increased in brilliance a thousand fold.

  “Whoa!” Minu barked, throwing an arm up to cover her eyes and simultaneously backing another step, just as everyone else in the room was doing. She quietly asked whatever deity might exist to not let the thing explode and kill them all.

  The floor began to vibrate and Minu could have sworn that the air felt charged with an other-worldly energy. She also thought she could still see her arm through her closed eyelids. Are those my bones?

  After a few heartbeats the light simply disappeared. The room was cast into utter silence so deep and penetrating it reminded Minu of being in deep space within a space suit.